There are lots of hard workers here, and people dedicated to their jobs who do wonderful work. However, there are one or two people who have figured out they're riding the gravy train and there are no conductors aboard.

I work with one of those people - and it's not really that there are no conductors on board, but that the conductor appears to just not care that she's getting a free ride. We suspect that she possesses blackmail material on said conductor...

No. We used to have a time tracking program, but what we do is so varied and there are so many small pieces that it became a hassle to continue it. (Although Jim's department now uses a similar, but different program, the department Sherri and I work under is not required to use it.) Basically if you meet your deadlines, nobody really cares what you do in between. The problem is that there's no way to quality check one's work, so if someone does a shoddy job and that person's manager doesn't notice (and, with how busy we all are now, they might not have time to delve too deeply into that) and they get the shoddy work done on time, then they get away with it.

We had an employee who worked here for ~10 years who worked in a remote office and turned out terrible work for years, but her manager protected her (and again, hard to get fired since managers know it could be two years before that person gets replaced.) Her excuses just kept getting more and more ridiculous, and she was finally let go, but in a mass layoff and her name was just casually mentioned in the company memo--they fibbed and said her position was redundant, which wasn't true but they didn't want to say, "X sucks, so we're firing her." It wasn't the wisest move, as some other remote employees with the same job title who didn't know X was a bad worker called in, freaked, thinking they were redundant too.

There are lots of hard workers here, and people dedicated to their jobs who do wonderful work. However, there are one or two people who have figured out they're riding the gravy train and there are no conductors aboard.

This is how it works with my one boss. Who comes and goes as she pleases, takes hour and two hour lunches to "run errands" on a regular basis, i.e. 2-3 times a week, if not every day, and while here, spends an inordinate amount of time on personal phone calls, and other personal business. But...her boss, our director, is only in 2 days a week, working from home the other 3, and as long as she gives him what he wants, he really could care less.

Meanwhile, her lack of whatever affects others, and morale is low. We are all so very sick of her, as what she does initially, then trickles down to others, and they can't proceed until she's done her stuff. And many times, she'll simply leave it to do her own stuff, then come back, making evryone else wait.

Now tomorrow, we get out at 2, while she may not plan to leave then, the rest of us do, so I can tell you she won't really make an effort to get things done earlier, since she has come out and said she doens't really care.

Whoopsie, I think I just heard about the unluckiest company delivery driver ever.

Our company does delivery of sensitive freight, which means that they aren't allowed to carry passengers in their vehicles. Our vehicles are also unmarked (for security reasons) but are still recognisable to those of us who see them often enough on premises to know what their plain white canopies look like. I couldn't tell you why I know it's one of our vehicles when I see them, but I just always know.

I was chatting with one of our senior managers, who had spent his holidays visitings friends of his who live in the same tiny town I used to live in for 15 years, so we were chatting about how things had changed and what was the same. He mentioned that while on a drive from my old town to another tiny little town nearby, he saw what he thought was one of our delivery vehicles. The vehicle passed him and he could not only see a passenger in the front seat, but also an arm sticking through from the back canopy section, meaning the driver also had at least one passenger in the freight section.

The manager phoned the nearby local company branch and asked them to confirm if the licence plate belonged to one of their delivery vehicles. Turns out that it did, and he was on a delivery run, so the manager waited until the driver pulled over on the side of the road and then walked up to his window and handed him a cell phone and said "Your manager wants to talk to you".

The poor driver must have been baffled that somehow, in the most rural part of the country, on a random backroad between two tiny towns, a senior manager in his company not only recognised his unmarked vehicle, but also had his direct manager on the phone to have a little chat with him.

The manager and the truck reminds me of a meeting I attended at a large hotel. The meeting room had huge windows overlooking a landscaped area. A worker was spotted in the landscaping, using a hand-held sprayer to spray weeds. And pavement. And nearby parked cars. He either had not been trained in proper, legal spray technique or had chosen (or been instructed) to ignore the rules.

Unfortunately for the worker and his employer, the meeting was a conference of government officials who regulate the use of pesticides.

The manager and the truck reminds me of a meeting I attended at a large hotel. The meeting room had huge windows overlooking a landscaped area. A worker was spotted in the landscaping, using a hand-held sprayer to spray weeds. And pavement. And nearby parked cars. He either had not been trained in proper, legal spray technique or had chosen (or been instructed) to ignore the rules.

Unfortunately for the worker and his employer, the meeting was a conference of government officials who regulate the use of pesticides.

I work with pesticides as in about 60% of my job. US gov't regulators do NOT have a sense of humor about safe use of chemicals.

I work with pesticides as in about 60% of my job. US gov't regulators do NOT have a sense of humor about safe use of chemicals.

Nor did the campus safety officer, when I called to request a warning for the next day the contractors cleaning the outside of my office building would be working, as they were power-washing the building with Clorox. At first I was annoyed with her, as she kept saying, 'Are you SURE?' and I replied, 'They are opening sealed boxes, pulling out jugs of Clorox that have bright, fresh, undamaged labels, and loading them into their basket truck's basket. And while they are working, it smells like Clorox.' It turned out, though, that she was just so astounded at the stupidity that she couldn't believe that they were blasting a campus building while students were coming and going every 50 minutes. My asthma had gone haywire, due to the chlorine I'd inhaled, and I thought about a lawsuit, but a student who sues their university can run into other problems...

Nor did the campus safety officer, when I called to request a warning for the next day the contractors cleaning the outside of my office building would be working, as they were power-washing the building with Clorox. At first I was annoyed with her, as she kept saying, 'Are you SURE?' and I replied, 'They are opening sealed boxes, pulling out jugs of Clorox that have bright, fresh, undamaged labels, and loading them into their basket truck's basket. And while they are working, it smells like Clorox.' It turned out, though, that she was just so astounded at the stupidity that she couldn't believe that they were blasting a campus building while students were coming and going every 50 minutes. My asthma had gone haywire, due to the chlorine I'd inhaled, and I thought about a lawsuit, but a student who sues their university can run into other problems...

What the heck did they think they were doing? Disinfecting the outside of a building? That makes no sense.

I'm not the pesticide police, but I used to enforce the Clean Water Act. There are very few building exteriors that do not drain into a storm drain or water body. Discharging bleach to the storm drain is usually a violation of federal law (the CWA). Not always, but almost always. Not to mention that the chemical needed to wash a building is a surfactant, not a disinfectant.

Jocelyn - I'm sorry to hear that the fumes aggravated your asthma. I hope the workers were wearing respirators or they might have done worse damage to their lungs.

Logged

"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."

Nor did the campus safety officer, when I called to request a warning for the next day the contractors cleaning the outside of my office building would be working, as they were power-washing the building with Clorox. At first I was annoyed with her, as she kept saying, 'Are you SURE?' and I replied, 'They are opening sealed boxes, pulling out jugs of Clorox that have bright, fresh, undamaged labels, and loading them into their basket truck's basket. And while they are working, it smells like Clorox.' It turned out, though, that she was just so astounded at the stupidity that she couldn't believe that they were blasting a campus building while students were coming and going every 50 minutes. My asthma had gone haywire, due to the chlorine I'd inhaled, and I thought about a lawsuit, but a student who sues their university can run into other problems...

What the heck did they think they were doing? Disinfecting the outside of a building? That makes no sense.

I'm not the pesticide police, but I used to enforce the Clean Water Act. There are very few building exteriors that do not drain into a storm drain or water body. Discharging bleach to the storm drain is usually a violation of federal law (the CWA). Not always, but almost always. Not to mention that the chemical needed to wash a building is a surfactant, not a disinfectant.

Jocelyn - I'm sorry to hear that the fumes aggravated your asthma. I hope the workers were wearing respirators or they might have done worse damage to their lungs.

Bleach kills algae, moss, etc. The stuff I can get at the hardware store to get rid of the black stuff on my driverway is about 5% bleach, maybe they were just trying to go for the cheaper option of mixing their own, but forgot to dilute it.

I heard (fortunately haven't had to learn it the hard way) that mold and mildew are not removed by bleach. Disinfected, yes, but not removed. I've heard that the "dark shadow" returns when the surface dries. The stuff that removes "black stuff" on the driveway probably has other active ingredients to help really remove the mold.

Logged

"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."

Industrial chemicals can be funny. When I was in a classroom I discovered I had an allergy to this cleaner that we used to clean the desks. It have me a rash which I at first thought was a wart. Disappeared when I left the school.

I heard (fortunately haven't had to learn it the hard way) that mold and mildew are not removed by bleach. Disinfected, yes, but not removed. I've heard that the "dark shadow" returns when the surface dries. The stuff that removes "black stuff" on the driveway probably has other active ingredients to help really remove the mold.

I've used 100% bleach or a very high concentration to remove mold and mildew. The key is that it has to sit for at least 15 min before rinsing well. Chlorine destroys the outside layer of bacteria in various ways leading to cell death.

The bleaches that were not so efficient may have been peroxide based bleaches, not chlorine based bleaches

I'm not sure how they were doing it- but the portion of the building they cleaned stayed free of moss for several years. However, after my phone call, I never saw them again, so I suspect that their contract was terminated over their cleaning methods. I suspect they were using some sort of powerwashing device that mixed the bleach with water...but they were using way too much bleach. I don't think I have an allergy to moss, but they were also aerosoling all sorts of crud from the outside of the building. Don't remember if they were wearing respirators, but I think they were.

This doesn't overly bother me from a privacy point of view, because if it's on the internet... but it bothers me from a time wasting and accuracy point of view. I can't even find *myself* on Google because there are a LOT of Iris McRealnames out there and I lose interest on page 10.

Perhaps these doctors only treat prominent people, or perhaps their Google fu is amazing but I don't want my treatment to change because some other Iris was arrested on a drug charge.